Author: chandl58

Since first starting working and creating posters I have become and addict to fonts and using them to communicate feelings and emotions. I often find myself looking and brands and logo and trying to decipher the hidden semiotics or meaning within the fonts. I decided to do my own little experiment. By having two coworkers who…

A. Use the computer daily

B. are female

C. are within the same age range

D. are intelligent

E. are my friends (Only a few people would like to take time away from their breaks for me)

I wanted to see how they viewed font compared to each other and compared to myself and the creator of the fonts. I should apologize now for the green ink, I don’t know what Person B was thinking.

Here are the real names of the fonts. All fonts were from Google and yes, they are all free!

1. Schoolbell

2. Lilly

3. Engagement

4. Lobster

5. Arizonia

6. Graduate

7. Punch Drunk

8. Flavors

9. Wendy one

10. Mountains of Christmas

What I loved about each person descriptions was how unified each person’s was. Person A used all NAMES while Person B used all ADJECTIVES. I happen to directly know some of Person A’s people of which she named the fonts after ‘Dexter’ or Mountains of Christmas is her sneaky beagle and ‘Brendan’ or Wendy One the ECON professor. She also used pop-culture references from Charlie Brown. I was amazed by her characters of each font and how for her, it directly related to a person in her life. Person B on the the other hand used terms and definitions almost for her font names and descriptions. She also happens to work in PR & Marketing at the College while the other is an Administrative Assistant. For both of their names for ‘Graduate’ they were spot on. Person A deemed it Varsity and Person B deemed it Collegiate.

I really want to show each person what the other said about the font so that they can see if each others relates at all. Is Person A’s people match the descriptions Person B gave?

It is amazing to see semiotics at use and the amount of detail and emotion a font can convey to different people. It is all perspective, and we all have a different one to use in learning.

Who knew how difficult this assignment would be. I have never constructed a photo essay before or taken groups of photos for a common cause.

Here I attempt to exposed my town’s negligence of tag clean up and the motive of a tagger through my own eyes and perspective. First noticing the crosses about 4 years I have since spotted them in other public areas and decided to explore the tagging more thoroughly. Why did someone tag crosses and ‘Jesus’? Why had they not been removed? By exploring the tags throughout my town I exposed not only the taggers possible motive but also a negligence of my town.

I thought of what Dr. Wolff said, “do not snap hundreds of images pick your shots wisely.” On a personal note, my phone has very limited space, leaving room for only 80 or so photos. My DSLR has room for thousands. As I normally shoot that way I wanted to try the challenge and I did for The Great Commission.

This is a Facebook group that aims to unite, share, and educate Saudi students in America. Two of my Facebook friends actually shared the post and it showed up on my timeline. I cannot say that I spent too much time on their page but the photograph caught my attention.

“The first image refers to pedophilia in the Vatican.

Second child sexual abuse in tourism in Thailand, and the…

third refers to the war in Syria.

The fourth image refers to the trafficking of organs on the black market, where most of the victims are children from poor countries;

Photographed by Erik Ravelo a Cuban photographer and artist he looks at children in their world. Sometimes children are neglected, in the form of rights and Ravelo called attention to this. Reminds me a bit of Trachtenberg. The photo, titled the “The untouchables”, puts children on crosses of their oppressors. Each photo presents a clear, disturbing message. Placing them all together shows the injustice is spread worldwide. We hear about each individual story in the news or on social media but they are normally not brought together. It unifies. It shines a light. It promotes change.

Additionally the viewers or audience did not need to know the details about each countries specific issue to identify it. I was unsure about Thailand and the organ black market photos. However I was immediately about to understand using children for amusement, specifically with the bright floral shirt, cap, and I believe camera in hand of the male cross. These items signified tourist, amusement, something that I have often thought about when friends travel to island destinations. The shift children on the cross in scrubs made me think of surgery or unethical treatment. I was reminded of my mash up where clips of a doctors wearing those green-blue scrubs injected a beagle or danged a rat exemplified harsh and cruel treatment of animals to relate it to human testing.

These children may not have loud voices, or physical strength or knowledge to change or release themselves from their oppression. Without the photographers motive and interpretation all the issues would not have been brought together.

While I hate to bring my blog post back to where I work I’ll do it again! Occasionally outside companies bring our department their flyers to hang up. The gentleman who handed me the flyers was tall, muscular, and dark haired. I won’t name the company of which he represented but the organization encourages college students to join club sports teams and engage in their social parties. I was quickly amused at the company flyers, instantly thinking they were comical. He left and I placed the fliers in my ‘to hang’ bin and went back to my work.

A few days past and I hung grabbed that same bin to hang up all the posters for the week. I first went to the community board and grabbed two the company’s flyers. I stopped, thumbtack in hand and looked at them. I became distraught and angry. Instead of wanting to join the business’ teams or having fun at their parties I was disgusted by their image. Each image displayed the confirmation of perceived stereotype. In one hand I had a ‘thick’ aggressive looking field hockey player with her mouth guard sticking out of her mouth and in the other I had a thin blonde turning her back to the camera to show her back dimples and baseball jersey. Just these two images juxtaposed together made me feel as if girls who play these sports come from completely different backgrounds.

“Now you, pick up the field hockey stick and look at me with anger in your eyes. Be fierce, be bold.” I can hear the photographer shout at the mode. The female hockey player showed me a masculine or ’butch’ side of women.

And then, there is the sexy baseball jersey wearer showed me how women are used as models. Why would the girl appear to be participating in the sport?

“Roll up the jersey a bit and turn around but give of us a sultry look. You know what; roll it up a little bit higher.”

Additionally there were four other images other flyers with different images. One, featured basketball and another, dodge ball and football. These three images really got me thinking. Firstly, I have always thought of basketball to be predominantly African American. In fact, from the 2013 Racial and Gender Report Card: National Basketball Association, “African-Americans comprised 76.3 percent of all NBA players. Eighty-one percent of players were players of color.” I found it odd or misrepresentative that the player featured for basketball was a white male.

The PR department probably mulled that over for hours.

“He can’t be black. We can’t be racists, pick a white male instead. Good character, right?”

He seemed, to my own standards ‘good looking and kind’.

Compared to the basketball player, the dodge ball African American appeared dull and harsh. The man nonetheless wore gloves and held a dodge ball, a sport best related to elementary school. Dodge ball has been notorious for the game to pick on the weak and rally the strong, and game that separates. Ironically, a black male was chosen to represent this sport.

Then the next male model represented football. This model was ferrous, sweaty, mean, and ugly. His face showed pure anger.

The photographer probably told him, “Squeeze the football like it’s someone’s head.”

Showing me anger and dominance I felt nervous look into his eyes. He was strong and powerful and I being a small, 120 lb woman, would not be able to handle him if he chooses to attack- I felt scared.

The last image, which was juxtaposed right after the angry football player, was disgusting. Soccer was displayed this time. But the model… she wore no bra, exposing her nipples and her hips bones stuck out of her skin. I don’t mean to say she was overly skinny, but she certainly wasn’t hiding anything. Like the baseball jersey model she exemplified the female body as an object. Her sexy stare into the camera wasn’t one I’d see on a competitive player.

I was ashamed of these ads, astounded by the sexism and racism by six flyers. At first glance I laughed, but when I really examined them my secret semiotican came out. I decided to only hang up a few of them. I threw out the sexy soccer player, baseball and football player. I places the normal basketball player and on another bulletin board, the dodge ball and field hockey together. I didn’t want to showcase sexy, or rough. I wanted wholesome competitive, sport play. Of what that is now, I am not so sure.

I was contemplating the idea of capturing life in the moment through panoramic view. When things are not part of our main focus we tend to forget about them. If we utilize our peripherals and examine life in a panoramic view we become aware of the moment we are in. I can only recollect on small opportunities when my teachers asked me to pay attention to how much I could see while looking straight ahead. Even then I didn’t think about perspectives, I only thought about my health. When we only look straight ahead, without using our peripheral we don’t notice everything that surrounds us unless we are prompted to look for it. By taking time to look around we are given a moment to recognize the present and forget about the future, or where we have to be. If spotlight is placed on the future, the present is neglected. For this proposal I was conflicted on how my content would be captured. On one hand cellular devices represent moments in the now, because they are always with us our lives are tracked with the cell phones, unlike a large and heavy DSLR, which is not used for regular life. That being said, using and DSLR is also an attractive choice as it can represent clarity. These movements are often overlooked are important and should be given the same credit as momentous occasions that demand a higher quality photo.

My other proposal was to look at texting and driving in a different light. Texting a driving kills more than just humans by alluding to the idea of the undervaluing of animals in a human dominated culture. There’s an unspoken rule while driving that you shouldn’t swerve for something smaller than cat, but if the thing was a human being, you slam on the brakes as hard as you can. I was thinking about taking photos of ‘roadkill’ or dead animals that had been hit by cars. These bodies are rarely taken off the road and will remain until they decompose, which is incredibly morbid if you think about it. Additionally, I would include my car in all of the photos. In order to capture the idea of texting and driving all images would be taken on my cellular device.

Not sure which idea I like more, so I need some assistance in choosing one, if either of them are accepted.

A. The Process
At first glance, when I signed up for the course I was extremely excited for the mash up. Looking over the student samples gave me great pleasure. And then my experience; I have never edited a video. My laptop is 6 years old and takes far too long to download clips, let alone software. I used my boyfriend’s adobe premier that crashed multiple times on imports and trimming. I then moved to on a specific Mac in the James Hall computer lab using iMovie to complete the assignment. For very first draft the work I put into mashing the clips together took about 5 hours. This of coursedid not include watching videos for that one second of footage needed. I severely underestimated the amount of work needed for the mash up. When I first watched the students work I immediately thought how well put together they looked. Little did I understand the work needed to get there.

The whole process was incredibly time consuming, almost to the point where you just want to stop and never open YouTube ever again. This is the portion where my learning occurred. Spending those long hours was necessary in order for me to understand the software. Looking back, I needed that time to figure out how the software worked, because I have never worked on something similar with devoting hours to learning it, I wouldn’t have been able to work with as easily as I did towards the end. It made me think that if I wrote, including this very sentence, with the effort of a minute worth of mash up video, the sentence would be full of eloquent craft, composure, and nonetheless grammar free. I regret to note that my writing is never as such.The art of video mash up is intense, you can no longer write when inspiration strike. For me specifically I could only do it on a specific computer. That alone limited when I could compose.

I find it both easy and difficult to compare and contrast video mash ups to alphabetical writing. I found sources by speaking to those around me for inspiration. Additionally, I had to rely heavily on key word specific searches for my videos. The hardest part for me was watching content that made me uneasy. Usually, I would mute the audio and only focus on the visuals while finding clips. By doing so I was able to separate myself from the clips. When first starting the mash up, I had fears that I would get upset due to the content that I was researching : human testing . Occasionally, I would get stuck on what clips I should be looking for and I turned to articles and other sources that gave information on specific experiments on humans, just as I would a research paper.

There were also piles of video from movies that I had stumbled upon. These clips were easily found and were some of the first items mentioned when asking friends to help brainstorm scenes to use. The only issue was in the way that I included them. At the time, they were the most realistic clips I had found, but when I inserted them, it almost made the mash up comical, rather than serious and dark. While I thought putting clips of wolverine screaming would be effected, other perceived it as a moment to laugh because it was over the top. With that, I knew that I had to relook my approach and proceed deeper into video clips to find actual more raw footage. It was as if I were doing the research for a research paper, but not necessarily using that initial research. Once you uncovered an idea, you have to dig deeper and deeper to really get to what you were looking for. As a writer I tend to struggle with narrowing down a thesis for paper, but with the mash up, I did not have to worry about actually stating my thesis. Instead, the viewers are supposed to infer my meaning through the content.

Just like writing, the mashup needed constant revision. I would talk to something about what my purpose was and realize that a clip didn’t work or I would be explaining why I used a certain clip and realized I needed to use it more throughout the video or take it out. It was not until my last draft that I realized how much I had invested into the mashup. In general, I never talk to others about school, but here I was asking people for ideas and showing them the drafts I had published. It might have been because the work was actually meant to be viewed by the public that I cared more about it than an essay meant for a professors eyes. Or, was it because I am actually proud of the way the video turned out. For having no background in video editing I felt as though I was invested in the mashup, more than any other college assignment before. Even after I submitted my final draft I thought of another aspect I wanted to include and went back and revised and published again.

B. Semiotic Theories
The art of the mash up was an entirely new process for me. The idea of creating video as a form of writing is innovative. Previous college assignments are unparalleled to the challenge of my creative and writing processes. Creating the mash forced me to dispute my own understandings of what writing is, or rather now, what writing was. While, my creation did not necessarily comply with looking for ways to use the Semitic theories, instead diving deeper into the mash up allowed me to find out what my subconscious was doing in the process. I continue to look at semiotics based on the back of Sean Hall’s “This Means This This Means That” which states, “whether they are conscious or not, all graphic designers are semioticians.”

Throughout the video there are multiple clips of the progress of an atomic bomb exploding. As the video progresses, the mushroom of the bomb grows larger. Each clip of the atomic bomb are sped up 800%. This was done to exemplify the idea that experiments can get out of control quickly. By using fast and slow clips, Hall mentions that the clips can be used as a flow to determine speed (108). This quick flow is a symbol for one human, becoming several or one bomb, becoming 3000.

The clip of the bloody mouth throughout the mash up is used as a symbol of gore. When it first appears the viewers are forced to watch it for approximated 3.5 seconds, concluding to the idea that you cannot hide yourself from the truth. Because it is in your face, it is meant to show viewers the dirty world of testing. This clip has claimed the prominence over the mash up, as it is repeated several times throughout the whole piece (Hall 122). This disturbing image, along with the various scenes from a LUSH campaign showing a human in a nude bodysuit getting treated as an animal would should allude to an uneasy feeling in my viewers. I did this so that my audience remembers the disturbing image, just as human testing is.

Additionally, I want viewers to realize that chemicals once deemed safe by organization have had terrible side effects on the participants at hand. The clip of spraying DDT on the children and in a city street demonstrates an idea that children and society were being used as testing subjects without their knowledge, and without the knowledge of the scientists.

I show a scene of children acting as doctors three times within the mashup. These clips are always following or preceding clips of scientists or doctors. By juxtaposing them side by side I am creating the irony between innocence and intentions (Hall 60). The children playing doctor is used with juxtaposition to show the irony innocence plays in relation to real life situations. Additionally, it is also attempting to make intertextual relationships between the two images. This is to say that are connected under s common theme, and that “the various works are interrelated,” (Hall 126). Doing this communicates the idea that these innocent children are our future. As children they play doctor and in their adult life they take on the career. Depending on our needs they will either follow in our footsteps or change the behaviors around. There is a chance that they will continue to use humans as testing subjects or possibly be the humans that the testing is being done to. Much of science is exploratory, without any knowledge of dangerous effects some drugs of chemical produce. Cellular radiation, for instance has not been researched heavily for the cause of chronic illness, but like DDT could become the cause of diseases in future findings. These clips you may note are also in vibrant color as the saturation has been up, that is until the very end of the video when the saturation is turned all the way turning the children into grayscale. This change of clip demonstrates that chance for the children to grow up and continue testing on humans in unethical ways.

I wanted to emphasis that many times the testing subjects do not have control on their situations and are forced, without their knowledge or consent to the testing. For this idea, I included direct clips of animal testing with the images of the beagles in cages and receiving injections The viewers should connect with intertextuality to the clips of the mental ward which appear towards the end of the video and the multiple clips of the atomic bomb exploring. The clips of a white rat being dangled from a scientists hand is used as a direct symbol of animal testing, like the term, “lab rat”. That being said the rat is also being used as a metaphor for humans whom replace rats in certain experiments (Hall 54). This clip of the rat being handled is in grayscale until the very last clip where the saturation is upped and the scientist is petting the rat instead of dangling it. Coming after the children playing doctor clip I used the proximity to show that not only can the children change our future, but the adult can as well. The return of the color is potentially the return of kindness and hope for better treatments of humans (and animals alike). Here, is where you should pay careful attention to the color of said rat. It is white. Looking back I connect white to the scientists who carried out the treatments. More often than not it was a white male who was the doctor in my other clips and in society. By having a white rat I am depicting the idea that it has been historically Caucasians who have used other minorities for subjects (Hall 66). The scene where white ferrets pace in cages is using the color white to depict the main race that control who or what is being tested on. Hall notes that what is being depicted, “may also be different than what it represents.” When there are other groups that are below the majority that minority has been used for scientific experiments. Whether it is African Americas, individuals with disabilities, women, or children; when they are not seen as equal sometimes they are used in science as the testing subjects. Another metaphor that I used was the guinea pig, to go with the saying that the first one to test out if it works or doesn’t, are the guinea pigs .

While I do not necessarily believe that my mashup tells a story or narrative I believe that these final clips (children play doctor in grayscale and scientist petting a rat in color) give the mash up and ending thought to ponder upon. Whether that is the entire narrative of my mash up, I am not even sure, but it is one that draws attention to itself (174).

The trimmed a vaccination video clip to a section of a baby getting drops from a tube squeezed into its mouth. With Hall’s, “viewer and image” it can be assumed that the baby is receiving a harmful OR helpful drug. While in the original video the child is receiving a rotavirus oral vaccine, due to the doom and gloomy feeling one could receive from the video that specific image could be human giving a child a deadly drug. That being said, that clip in particular is very effective. Having two sides of possible interpretation, I like that conflict is provides viewers. It make them question what they are viewing and can in turn be used as a lie. While my originally intention for that specific clip was to portray medicine helping humans, the idea that the drugs being given to kill the child is also interesting. I feel as though in this clip I am not only lying or misleading my viewers, but also myself. In reality, the whole purpose of the video is to questions humans and society as a whole, this clip seems to do both of that, as long as the viewers are able to make that meaning from my content.

Engaging stereotypes for the mash up was an effective was to persuade my viewers to think as I do. By using a clip of a white doctor injecting serum or ‘treating’ blacks during the Tuskegee Syphilis Project I engage my audience to the ideal that testing on humans is unethical. I attempt to shame doctors, past and presents for their work regardless of how it helped others.

I used the video of a white blood cell chasing bacteria multiple times thorough the mash up. Many times it comes before and after the clip of a baby receiving an oral vaccination. Because of the proximity of the white blood cell consuming bacteria and the vaccination I mean to create the idea that vaccinations are necessary in the prevention of diseases. You may also notice that this clip appears in place of the machine gun at a certain point in the mash up, but doing this I was posing a double meaning. This is not only suggesting the need for vaccinations, but also reflects the dark truth that many vaccinations are created by using humans for testing. The sense and reference theory explains how our perceptions can shift “meaning of reference…to undermine or compromise our ability to communicate clearly” (Hall 84). By engaging two purposes for a single clip I am referring to two separate meanings.

Each draft of “Testing, Testing 1 2 3″ explored my own process, shifted the manner I composed, and ultimately pushed me revise, even when I thought the end product was final. I originally wrote the word “‘made’ me revise”, but the truth is that I wanted to and needed to in order to enhance my purpose for the assignment. I felt it necessary in order for my readers to better interrupt my message. For the first time ever in my college career, I was self motivated to revise my work, because I thought or understood the ideas behind the mash up more clearly in retrospect. By exploring the theories and comparing them to how I created my mash up, I have discovered my internal semiotician and I will continue to see the world with this view.

I walked past the radio station at Rowan University about a month ago and there was this sign about a cardboard box asking me to “Please take a free CD”. Of course, I took a bit more than one, but as I was doing do I thought about how I had now knowledge of the bands. A man past me an asked me if there was anything good within it. How could I have known? Half of the albums were from outside the States. Some of them told me what the artists sounded like, but that isn’t always a good communicator. So obviously, I judged the music by their CD case. Below is what I picked up.

I should note that I thought about our mashup storyboards when I placed these on my desk. (They are lined up in a long line) Immediately I thought they told a story, a narrative of sorts.

The story goes like this.

A beautiful land full of animals gets attacked by something terrible. The land turns into a hot dessert for many suns, until a group of people come across it and “get busy living”. In order to begin saving the land they need to indulge in some burgers and begin lathering the land up with some heavy waves of water, until little by little the land grows. Animals return, green plants flourish, and blooms blossom.

It’s a little strange I know, but these were just random CDs I picked up. Some I choose because they had animals or pretty landscapes. The hamburger case was funny and the deep red cases were interesting and eye catching. As a child, my grandmother told me to never judge a book by its cover, but that is how I have been picking up books in Barnes and Noble, it is how I choose these CDs. I didn’t read into the synopsis or care for who the banded sounded like. It was all in the image. Each cover was a signifier that signified something in me. They knew what I liked. They somehow knew that love animals and landscapes and silly stuff, but they also knew that I am curious. I have the urge to know why that hand is in a wave. Connecting images to the unknown an innovative concept, one that demands exploring.

I’ve decided that I am going to listen to the albums in the summer on while driving, and hopefully the CD albums with match with their songs, or, if they are daring, with be unorthodox.

I approached my storyboard in a bit of an irregular fashion. I wanted to have movable pieces so that I was able to rearrange and think of how to present the image. This presentation is a bit linear, so I’l have to rearrange them.

Being a by unsure of what and how to address ‘Human Testing’. Honestly, I had only thought that human testing was done unintentionally or with the testing subject unaware of the actual testing and had not ventured into the realm of intentional/forced human testing. Originally thinking I was looking into pollution, food pesticides, atomic bomb and technology radiation rather than Holocaust twin and African American syphilis unethical testing. Humans testing on other humans is an area I want to peruse as well. This mash up will include both intentional and unintentional testing on humans is a strangely intriguing idea. I want to connect the idea of animal testing to human testing to show that we are animals. Animals, as creatures and animals as monsters.

While I do not want to blatantly state my opinion of both being wrong I want the viewers to ponder about both idea and how humans control both of them. I am nervous about finding human testing clips. Having a magnitude of actual testing clips will be effective for the viewers, but depressive for my sanity.

At first glance, I immediately saw Animal Testing as a black and white topic. Being a large advocate for Beagles I neglected to look at it another way. I’ll begin thinking about animal testing in a new light, on humans. We are creating our world, but this world is now home to technology that we have created and many times we are unsure how it is affecting us. Cell phones omit radiation, but not much research has been conducted on the side effects it could possess. Our food is manipulated, mass produced, and full of toxic and unnatural chemicals War alone has killed millions. Whether and unwanted draft or a new advanced weapon, the battlefield has also become a large laboratory for human rats.Our bodies are becoming the test subjects. Are humans testing humans? Are we merely just another animal to be tested on? I want to incorporate animal testing and war imagines. I think that having a contrast of clean food imagines and over worked, processed food as well might aid my vision.

When thinking of a topic to explore deeper for the video mashup assignment I wasn’t entirely sure of what to pick. I believe that I have multiple organizations or concepts that I feel very strongly about, but when looking at them, it was too difficult to look at the other side of the argument. I strongly disagree with using animals of any kind for testing of drugs or cosmetics or any other products that humans will use because I views humans as animals and you will not find me volunteering for some harsh drug testing treatment. I am already decided I wanted something else.

One organization in particular that I follow caught my eye specifically for this assignment. Liberty in North Korea.

Following organization intently for about two years, I have never once done my own research on the issues at hand. In fact, I regret to say that I do not know much about the country’s politics or history. I’ve only ever thought that whatever going on in NorthKorea was wrong and honestly that’s not a good enough argument. I want to use this assignment to independently explore what is actually going on in North Korea and specifically look into cultural aspects. One problem I’ve come to realize about America and Americans that we always think that is our job to change other people situations because we perceive them to be wrong. I want to challenge this idea. Though weary, I wish to find and connect to other instances that America has intervened as the ‘hero’ and explore the current situation for the people of North Korea. This appears to be a challenge because North Korea is a dead zone and videos about it are perceptions. It is important to remember throughout my search for material that I need to look at the sources and take in the specific idea the creator may hold.

I will be looking towards US presidential speeches, as well as using images that will explore how the people both in and outside of North Korea view North Korea. If I do find images of North Korea, I expect them to give me stereotypical poverty images or unified marching in the streets and on the contrast the high riches of the governing families. I think that I would like to include traditional North Korean music when reviewing their views and possibly look towards an over dramatic song for going over America want to change and help other cultures. I am unsure of the specif tone I wish to set, but I feel I am already beginning to approach this in a satirical manner.